Frustrated by a lack of informed and honest review websites covering a wide range of electronic music, I write them myself.

Monday, May 2, 2016

Council Of Nine - Dakhma

Cryo Chamber: 2015

Council Of Nine has existed since the days of Greek Mythology, Olympian Gods who sought to punish Mankind after Prometheus had the audacity to give us Fire. These deities – Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Hephaestus, Aphrodite (the cute one!), Apollo, Athena, Hermes, and Demeter (the serious one) – created the first woman, Pandora, and sent her as a gift to Prometheus’s dopey brother, Epimetheus. The Council Of Nine also sent with her a Box, with instruction it was never to be opened. They figured dumb ol’ Epi’ would accidentally knock it off a table or something, thus the Council Of Nine could unleash all the ills of Mankind upon the world, and blame it on the Titans! Little did they know their own creation would open the Box instead, Pandora’s curiosity getting the better of her, throwing a wrench into their blame game. Women, am I right, Zeus?

'kay, I’ve no citation that this is the ‘Council Of Nine’ Maximillion Olivier chose as an alias. Heck, it could be based off the South Park parody of the Council Of Nine, which included such luminaries as Aslan The Lion, Luke Skywalker, Gandalf, Jesus (the cute one!), Wonder Woman, Glinda The Good Witch, Popeye, Zeus, and Morpheus (the serious one). Seeing as how this is a dark ambient release though, I’m leaning more towards the governing body of the Church Of Satan as a source of inspiration than a relatively obscure part of Greek lore. I had to share some of these Wiki discoveries.

Mr. Olivier makes the sort of dark ambient most associate with the genre: creepy, foreboding, bleak stuff drawing upon images of black rituals and the occult. Can’t say it’s a sound I particularly gravitate towards – when I indulge in dark ambient, it’s mostly of the cosmic, isolated sort that leaves one alone with their thoughts. Mind bending abstract stuff’s kinda’ cool too. If I’m gonna’ splurge on Cryo Chambers’ catalog though, I may as well take in all the genre’s forms. Who knows, maybe I’ll stumble upon something just as dope as Sabled Sun!

Can’t say Dakhma is that release, though it certainly executes the ‘dark ambient by way of eerie ritual’ mold in fine fashion. The title is reference to an open structure where Zoroastrianists bring dead bodies for the purpose of excarnation, essentially letting carrion birds pick away at corpses before being taken away for burial. Though macabre, this does have practical value to it. Look it up, it’s fascinating.

Dakhma holds six tracks giving us a portrait of the ritual. Some, like Tower Of Silence and The Ossuary, have distant melancholic tones setting the mood of the passing of the dead. Others like The Magi and Nasu, focus more of the sounds and activities that may occur during such an event. The two longest though, Sacrifice and Circle Of The Sun, are some of the deepest, crushing drone I’ve ever heard. It’s like my soul’s being suffocated and squeezed out of my body. Well done.